


Starfell

by lygrim



Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Gen, I had a lot of plans for this and they were fucking good but I don't have the time, I'm sorry for that, Magic, Marriage of Convenience, This is going to be orphaned eventually, Worldbuilding, beasts and monsters, formally known as The Feudal High Fantasy AU on tumblr, i'm just warning you now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-01 00:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17233820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lygrim/pseuds/lygrim
Summary: AKA The Feudal High Fantasy AU, finally here on AO3 in perpetuity for your viewing pleasure. Edit 1/6/19: Added a proper chapter one. Please re-read.





	1. In the Beginning

Once upon a time, in the shadow between two mountains, there was a verdant valley. At valley's edge, sprouting from the foot of the eastern mountain like a cluster of toadstools, was a village.

The Lord and Lady of the village were wise, turning the labors of the commonfolk into a thriving community where there was plenty for everyone. They lived in a fortress carved out of the mountain's flank, like a stony giant watching over the peaceful vale. The Lord looked upon his domain and was pleased, but the Lady looked upon her mountain hold and saw it empty, devoid of the pattering of feet and joyous giggles of a child to love and raise to become the next Lord Between the Mountains. Every brew and herb and tonic she could procure, she took. Any potion she could tip into her husband's wine, she did. Years passed before she resigned herself to the will of her Gods; she would bear no children.

 

\---- The First Winter ----

 

It was Wintertide, and it was snowing.

She pulled herself from her husband's side and the down ticking. These days, when she rose the sun did not rise with her and she had long since stopped looking to the dark and shuttered window. But this morning, a wicked howling was in the air, underlined with a roaring like thunder and ten thousand baying dogs, and light purer and brighter than the noonday sun pierced it's fingers into the room and cast stark shadows everywhere.

She lurched to the shutters and threw them wide, in a terror that the End Times had come and Barathi was shaking herself to pieces to return the world to the Nothingness. A wall of light hit her like a physical force, and she shielded her eyes against it, and then the earth lurched and quaked with a shuddering boom that threw her to the ground and the lord from his bed, finally waking him.

When her sight and hearing returned, she cleaved to the windowsill to see, her legs still shaking like aspen trees in a gale. Outside the darkness had returned, but it was interrupted with a red glow from behind the western mountain, highlighting a russet streak like an arm billowing towards the heavens. The sun does not rise in the west, she thought. Had that last sound been the earth grinding to a halt, and now the sun was moving backwards?

"Fuck," her husband said grimly, shuffling behind her. "That's a lot of fire."

 

\----

 

The mountain burned for days. The trees were swathed in coats of snow and the earth was wet, but the fire crawled around the peak regardless. The villagers spent the days digging firebreaks and stocking up water. She spent them carefully reviewing preparations, planning rations for the worst-case scenario, and presenting a cheerful face to a scared and ashen populace.

When the night sky stopped glowing red, she rode with her husband and his company to inspect the damage. It took several hours to get there; many times they had to dismount and walk the horses through bad footing and sooty bracken.

Their destination was hard to miss. The face of the mountain had been blasted away, dirt and rock and trees flung everywhere as if disturbed by the diggings of a colossal boar, leaving a massive crater behind. In the center was a second, deeper depression that still curled with smoke. Her husband bade her remain while the men forged closer, citing treacherous terrain, so she smiled tightly and played the dutiful wife.

The first man to reach the depression nearly caused her death. He examined the drop for a moment, and then jumped in, disappearing entirely from sight. A few more followed, and the rest crowded around.

A shout went up, and the men shifted around in excitement. She shifted anxiously on her horse, unable to see, fearing injury. It seemed to take an age for them to pull the first man back from the earth's embrace. He was whole and proud, presenting something to her lord husband. She waited impatiently as the group turned as one and headed back, her husband in the lead, holding a bundle in his arms and grinning like a fool.

Not three horse lengths from her, his boot caught a foul patch of earth, and he tripped with a cry of dismay, his prize tumbling from his arms. It appeared to be a giant golden egg, and her heart clenched as it cracked on the cold hard ground, milky fluid running from the fissures and soaking into the abused soil. In that mess of white and gold, she swore she saw a bundle of flesh, and a thatch of chestnut hair.

She was off her horse before her husband could even right himself. She cleared away the shell and as she pulled the last piece aside, time stopped.

In front of her, covered in albumen and shimmering gold specks and dark rich earth, was a babe. The most beautiful babe, perfect and soft, curled in a tight ball with the faintest dusting of hair, its eyes closed tight. She reached out to touch it and immediately recoiled. Its skin was slick and wet and cold as ice. She grasped it again and pulled it tight to her, wiping at it with her cloak, trying to rub life into its tiny chest, warmth into its tiny hands.

Her husband tried to get her attention. He called her name, touched her shoulder. She rubbed more vigorously, blowing on those tiny, chilled fingers. When he tried to take the babe from her, she screamed out a hoarse battlecry and bared her pretty teeth at him until he stumbled away, gauntleted hands raised in submission. It was only then that a little body jolted against her chest and issued a hiccuping cry, like a startled wood dove.

She looked down into a scrunched face, rapidly mottling from milky white to angry red as the babe opened its arms and legs and mouth and wailed, strong as a storm. It-- he, a boy, a son for her- cried hot tears and she was in love. His hair was soft as fawn fur and his little limbs were strong as he struggled and kicked. She held him up tight and cooed to him, struggling to undo her cloak pin with one hand so she could swaddle him for the cold ride back.

"What are you doing?" Her husband asked from so very far away.

"I am keeping my son warm," she answered, pulling the green wool around him. He stopped crying as the fox fur of the ruff rubbed against his face and opened his eyes. They were a blue so magnificent, she stopped breathing. They looked at her with an ageless knowing. They looked at her and showed her the movements of the universe and the infinite passageways of fate leading up to this one impossible, wonderful eventuality.

"That is not your son," her husband objected.

"He is now." She rose to her feet. Her boy squirmed and freed one pudgy arm, reaching for her ruby eardrops, entranced. "You don't have to raise him, but you do have to claim him. If they say I am a whore, I do not care, but I will not abide any calling him a bastard."

"See reason," Her husband entreated as swept by him to her horse.

"No.” One of the men helped her mount, and she stared down at her Lord. "Don't you see we have been given a gift? This is an heir, more magnificent than any I could have borne you. You have a choice; you can either be a cuckold, or the sire of a Star Child, but I have made my decision." With that she spurred her mare into motion and trotted homeward. She did not turn back.

 

\---

<My Lord?>

He stepped back from the scrying pool.

Three nights ago, in the middle of a dream, he had felt the weave of fate shift and flex. The moon had whispered to him that a drop of sunlight had escaped her pull and fallen to the world of man. He had woken in a dead sweat and began preparations.

Today, he watched as a noblewoman fell into the thrall of a newly-woken God and borne him away without question.

<My Lord? Did you see it?> His attendant rasped, shifting his bulk anxiously in the dark of the room.

<Yes, Mynyn.> He murmured, eyes flashing as he calculated. <Prepare the keep. Kelé has arrived.>

 

\---- Spring, Second Year ----

 

Lady Scott stood at her window, her son at her breast. It had been a hard winter, and she was grateful to see new growth and birds on the wing.

She had survived. Their storehouses held all winter, as planned, but a strange flux had festered in the village. It had ripped through the families, and by spring time they had lost handfuls of friends and neighbors. She had her suspicions about the cause.

The keep had fared better, but had still felt loss. The Lord had succumbed, as well as the steward and a scullery maid. The flux had weakened her, but she had pulled through. Now it was just her, and her son.

"We'll be alright," she told him as he napped. He was a year old now, and getting big. She had taken to holding him for as long as she could, against the day that she wouldn't be able to carry him anymore. Her boy was growing up strong. It was good; he would need his strength.

She looked back out the window, watching the village wake. _Yes_ , she thought. _We're going to do just fine._

 

\---- Winter, Tenth Year ----

 

"Roxanne! Roxanne, get back here! I'll whip you raw, girl!"

Roxanne giggled and dodged as a snowball whizzed by her head, woolen skirts hitched around her knobby six-year-old knees as she skidded down the track.

Mother might switch her later, but she said Roxanne could go listen to the story teller if Roxanne finished all her chores, and she finished all her chores! It's not her fault that Mother then went and added more!

She was breathless by the time she made it to the village well, and the children who could be counted on to come were already there. Clustered around Old Geral's feet, bundled in coats and hats, they giggled and wrestled in the snow. Gwayne was already there, saving one of the best spots for her.

Gwayne was the strongest boy in the village, and he was only ten. He was the best at wrestling, and fighting with sticks, and the fastest runner, but Roxanne didn’t hold that against him because he told funny jokes and saved her spaces at the story telling.

"Are we all here now?" Old Geral rumbled, his single brown eye watching as she slipped around the outskirts of the crowd and settled into her spot.

Gwayne elbowed her in the side; she elbowed him back. "What took you so long?" He whispered.

"Shut up and listen," she hissed.

The storyteller cleared his throat. "If we're all quite ready, I can begin." The little crowd cheered in assent, and he nodded, the king presiding over his subjects. "Very well. What shall we hear today, on this fine Winterstide Eve? Perhaps how Barathi the Serene took hold of Chaos and brought the world out of the Nothing?" Roxanne and everyone around her booed voraciously.

"No?" The story teller said innocently, hitching his leg up on the lip of the well. "Not that one? How about The Great Serpent and the Endless Seas?"

"It's Wintertide! You've gotta tell the story of the Star Child!" Roxanne yelled, and the children behind her took up the call, roaring in agreement. Gwayne burrowed his head in his hands to hide his blush, but Roxanne could still see the tips of his ears turning pink. She jabbed him in his exposed side.

"You want me to tell you about the Star Child again?" Geral's eye twinkled with amusement, watching Gwayne shake his head while still hiding his face. The other children were screaming with excitement. "Oh, alright. Twist an old man's leg." He braced his weight against the well and leaned forward, face serious and eager, as if he was letting them all in on a fabulous secret.

"Ten years ago to the day, a star fell in our valley, carving out the face of the western peak."

He told the story of the Lonely Lady and the Star Child, born from a giant golden egg, the shattered pieces of which still held place of honor in the the Lady's hall. And then he got to Roxanne's favorite part of the story.

"The coming of the Star Child was the portent of many more bizarre and fantastical changes yet to come." Old Geral threw his hands in the air and lowered his voice to a menacing boom. "The very day the Star Child came, the Sorcerer appeared to the Lady. He was terrible to behold, and came wreathed in lightning." He held out a hand, fingers curled into claws. "He demanded the child for himself. The Lady refused to part with her son, and promised to fight to her last breath." Geral hunched over and growled like a bitter old man.

"'I have waited centuries for him,' the Sorcerer said, 'And you cannot protect him forever. I am patient, I can wait.' That was the last time he was seen in the village, but the next winter he set a sickness upon us. That was beginning of a quiet war between good, and evil. He steals our animals, blights our crops, and poisons our water. Do you know why there are no dogs on the street after nightfall?" Old Geral waits, and the children hold their breath.

"It is because he steals them in the night," he snarls,"and turns them into monsters to punish us. His creatures roam our streets in the dark, skittering over our rooftops, looking for children to steal. That is why you must always be home by dusk, and lock your doors, lest he take you in the dark and twist you with his magic."

"The Sorcerer claimed the very spot where our Star Child fell within a sennight, filling in the hallowed earth with a great lake. Those brave enough to visit the mountain say he dwells at the bottom. They say, if you tarry too long at the lake's edge, you will see shadows in the deep. If you stay long enough to see the shadows move, you will never be see again." He growled lowly. The children shivered and huddled closer.

"That is why you must never go to the mountain. You children were too young to know it, but we had faeries in this valley once. They'd light up the summer nights with every color imaginable, flirting out over the fields. It was beautiful," he mused wistfully. "But not anymore. Every magical creature in the valley is drawn to the mountain now, pulled in by the Sorcerer's presence. Creatures of legend, some of them. Creatures not seen in an age. Creatures best left unseen. They guard his mountain. Only a very brave man, a strong man, may venture there and hope to be seen again."

"I'm not afraid." Gwayne says solemnly. "I'll go there someday. Mama says that place is my birthright. She says when I defeat the Sorcerer, I will see it again, and the valley will be at peace."

"I'm not afraid neither!" Roxanne piped up. "I'm gonna go see the Sorcerer too!"

Old Geral tilts his head back and laughs warmly. The children laugh too, but it is not a good laugh.

"Ah, little Roxanne. Spitfire and salt, just like your mother. Maybe leave the mountain to those a little stronger than you, hmm?" Geral suggests, still chuckling.

"But I am strong," Roxanne protests. No one seems to hear that, not even Gwayne.

 

\---- Spring, Eighteenth Year ----

 

Roxanne leaned on the sun-bleached wooden fence, watching Gwayne single-handedly beat all the village boys at tug o' war. He gave one hard pull, and the whole mess of them tumbled forward into the mud.

Gwayne was a man now, and the girls were flocking to him with renewed vigor. To fourteen-year-old Roxanne, who had been watching it happen for about five years now, it was a familiar annoyance. The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that Gwayne didn't make cow-eyes back at them. That and the way he blushed when she teased him about it.

It had been harder to spend time with her old friend since she started getting her moon blood, and she was getting lonelier. The boys who wanted to be around him all the time didn't want to be around _her_ all the time, and the girls whispered behind her back and made faces at her.

Roxanne was pretty sure it was because the grown-ups thought she and Gwayne were courting. Her mother had told her to 'keep tight hold of that lordling, Roxanne, even if you have to hold him by the manparts.' Roxanne didn't tell anyone that they were only friends, and they would only ever be friends.

Gwayne had told her a secret, that he didn't really love anybody; not like the adults did when they thought no one would catch them, all sweaty and undignified. He had told Roxanne he loved her as a friend, though, and she was happy with that. It was all she wanted anyway.

"Roxanne! Roxanne, behind you!"

"Hmm?" She looked up, called out of her daydream. Gwayne was striding towards her, eyes fixated in the air.

She turned and immediately saw what caught his attention. Floating high above them was a speck of dark grey in the clear blue sky, glinting and flickering red and purple in the sunlight.

"What is it?" She whispered as Gwayne joined her at the fence.

"One of the Sorcerer's spies." He answered grimly. "I don't usually see them alone, or in daylight. One on its own isn't difficult to handle, but a pack of them could tear you to shreds. Here, I'll take care of it." He bent down to pluck a stone from the ground, and in one fluid motion reared up and flung the stone so fast and so hard it whistled through the air with deadly speed. It hit it's target with a shattering crash, and the little grey spot plummeted from the sky to the ground.

"Stay here," Gwayne told her, but to hells with that! She followed him out, the other kids trailing behind curiously. He rolled his eyes but didn't stop her.

When they reached the grey thing there wasn't much to see. It was just a mess of scattered purple crystal and what looked like twisted metal with... teeth? It still squirmed and kicked on the ground, oozing an inky red and black haze. It was pitiful to be dangerous in her opinion; it was even making a faint whining sound.

Without warning, Gwayne stepped forward and started stomping it into the ground, rending it to pieces. The whining sound intensified in pitch for a few moments, and then stopped. It stopped oozing, too. When he pulled his foot away, it was just useless bits of metal and crystal ground into dust.

"There," he said with satisfaction while the other boys jeered and took crystal shards as souvenirs. "Maybe he'll learn to stop sending them now."

Roxanne had a hard time getting that whining sound out of her ears for the rest of the day.

 

\---- Summer, Twenty-Fourth Year ----

 

"You're crazy."

"Roxanne, it's the perfect solution, just hear me out--"

"Absolutely not. That's a terrible idea and I can't believe you said it."

"Roxie, please."

"Don't call me that, you know I hate it."

"Listen. The girls will get off my back, my mother will be happy, YOUR mother will be happy, you'll have status, people will stop saying you're my thrall..."

Roxanne gave Gwayne a withering look. "I'm still waiting for the part where you give me a good reason."

"Does that mean you're considering it?" Gwayne asked hopefully.

"No." She smirked and turned back to her parchment and counting stones. She had to finish tabulating the crop projections for Lady Scott. Gwayne was not helping.

"C'mon, Roxanne." He wheedled. "You've got to admit, it does solve everything. All the pressure everyone has been putting on us for years, all the things they say about you. Our mothers would be so happy, and the best part is we don't even have to change anything. It'll still just be the two of us, as we've always been. Roxanne," he reached out and gently touched her face, guiding her to look at him.

She smiled faintly. Any other girl would leap at the opportunity, or melt to have the most desirable man in the village touch her intimately like this. When Roxanne looked at those sparkling blue eyes she just saw her best friend in them, as earnest and pure as when they were kids.

"There's no one else I would ask." He said quietly. "You know me. I don't have to be anything but myself around you, and I love you for that. I trust you more than anyone. You don't have to say yes, but please just think about it."

She huffed a great sigh, and endeavored to look as put-upon as possible. "Fine. I'll think about it."

Gwayne whooped and lifted her right out of her chair and spun her around the room, laughing. And really, what could she do but join in?

\----

She found him the next day, lost in his thoughts under the apple tree. She was still equivocating when he looked up at her with a hopeful expression, so she just gave in with a sigh. "Fine, I'll marry you. But it had better be a hell of a ceremony."

 

\---- Fall, Twenty-Fourth Year ----

 

It was, in fact, a hell of a ceremony.

Lady Scott had initially been frosty when they announced their intentions, and Roxanne couldn't blame her. She had no family, no connections, and no prospects. Gwayne had been working on his mother before the engagement, but it had still taken her some time to come to terms with her boy marrying a farmer's daughter. Eventually she warmed up to the idea. Gwayne said it was because she thought Roxanne was smart as a whip. Roxanne tried not to let the praise go to her head.

Telling her own mother had been even more uncomfortable, unsurprisingly. The first thing her mother had done was to squeal, throw her arms around them, and promptly ask when she could move in to the mountain keep (that had turned into a long, awkward, delicate negotiation). Within weeks she was asking for grandbabies. Roxanne snarked that she'd like to have an actual ceremony first, thank you, and left out that she and Gwayne had agreed children would never happen.

Said ceremony had turned out to be months of work and planning. Lady Scott had invited the whole village, and suggested they wait until after the harvest so they could cater it properly. Roxanne became keenly aware that the Lady Scott's mind for logistics rivaled any military commander's, and began to reevaluate what she'd been told about the old Lord's relative involvement in the success of village affairs.

Roxanne also threatened Gwayne several times with calling the whole thing off as the plans got more and more extravagant and the work mounted. Every time she did, Gwayne would calm her down, disappear for a while, and the next time she came back to a task, it had been magically simplified down to something workable. She grumbled to herself about it, but she had to admit; they did make a pretty good team.

Still, she thought as she walked up the chapel steps, she was glad it was almost over with.

The vows were said before Barathi the Serene, patron goddess of balance, marriage, and promises. The bands were exchanged, Gwayne shared a chaste kiss with her, the villagers cheered, and suddenly she was the lord's wife.

After that, it was a blur of food and drink and music long into the night. Gwayne had too much ale and made a fool of himself trying to play the fiddle, and the two danced and laughed. The festivities paused to witness a shower of stars, racing across the sky. Everyone agreed it was the most beautiful wedding.

That night they executed their plan for the marriage bed. They spilt oil and, after a heated debate which Gwayne won, chicken blood on the sheets to explain away tomorrow. After that they just laid together and laughed and talked. When Roxanne finally drifted towards sleep, Gwayne cuddled up warm behind her, her last thought before closing her eyes was she could get used to being married to her best friend.

 

\---- Fall, Thirtieth Year ----

 

After long consideration and against  all better judgement, Roxanne leaves for the western mountain. Not that there is anyone to judge, of course; she has kept where she is going a closely guarded secret, especially from Gwayne.

No one notices, either. She chooses the time before the harvest festival to slip away, when all are too busy preparing for the feast to miss her.

The only one to ask her whereabouts she's headed so early is the gatekeeper. She puts him off with a remark about gathering wildflowers before she sashays down the path, swinging her basket as she goes. He is so busy watching her skirts swish around her rump that he does not notice the sickle she carries in her basket, nor the sling and the bag of pebbles half-hidden in the folds of her skirt.

The fog is her only company as she traverses the valley between the peaks. It clings to her and deadens the world: the sunlight, even sound smothered in a blanket of grey. If it weren't for the bleating of sheep hidden in the mist, she would think she was the only soul in the world.

She reaches the treeline in the early afternoon. She says a quick prayer to the dilapidated shrine lodged between two trees. It’s littered with tatters of cloth and dried flowers, tribute and payment for safe passage around the mountain. Her words are all she brought, and they’ll have to do.

Curiously, the warm autumn sun hasn’t dispersed the fog. It only thickens as she climbs, clinging like the cobwebs of an ethereal spider between every tree and bush. Roxanne snorts at the idea of a giant spider scuttling through the forest, trailing mist from its spinneret, and then considers that if such a thing were to exist, this would be the place.

She, ah. She resolutely refuses to be put off by that thought. At all.

She stops to eat her lunch and considers whether she should return to the festival and try again on a day where she can see what she's doing. She's just testing the waters, but she daydreams about finding the wizard’s lair. Perched on a boulder by a stream, she chews on the hard heel of yesterday’s bread, topped with a generous slice of goat cheese and greasy sausage. When she’s done, she washes it down with the sweet flesh of one of the last peaches of the season. She’s washing her hands and refilling her water skin from the stream when something grabs her.

She turns on her heel with a blood curdling screech and swings, thumb tucked outside her fist like Gwayne had shown her. The creature that crumpled to the ground at her feet was not unknown to her, and she briefly regretted that she hadn't been ambushed by a monster instead.

"You broke my nose!" Halfred Stewardson wailed, curling up like a pillbug and holding his face.

"Gods, but you scared the life out of me! Stop squirming and let me see. Your nose isn’t broken, you’re fine. What are you doing here?" She asks as she hauls him to his feet.

"I followed you, so if I'm here, it's your fault." He sniffles, wiping at the blood dripping from his nostril and dragging it onto his tunic. "I saw you crossing the western pastures and figured I had better come keep you out of trouble, just like when we were kids." He told her with a lopsided grin.

She hummed skeptically and did not note that for one thing, she was adept at taking care of herself (better than he was, evidently), and for another, he had perennially been the one get her _in_ trouble when they were kids. There were a number of times she had been forced to beat his ass when he had pulled her hair or thrown rocks at her, or tried to peek at her bathing. She'd almost castrated him for that once.

"If you're gathering, I'd be happy to stay with you while you work and walk you back to the village. If you’re quick we’ll make it before the feast gets underway," he offered. From anyone else, on any other day, it would be a sweet, helpful offer she may have even accepted. From Halfred, who tenaciously dogged her steps despite the fact that she was married, it inspired a creeping disgust, such as when you realize you have dog shit smeared all along the hem of your best temple dress.

"That's very brave of you." She said slowly, calculating just how much of a coward he was against his general obtuseness. "I do have to go up a little higher in the treeline, into the sorcerer's territory."

"Oh. Uh," Hal raked his fingers through his greasy hair. "That sounds... foolish. Are you sure you have to go up there?"

"Oh, I must." Roxanne said brightly. "You see, mother has had the most ghastly runs, and they're quite contagious.  I have to go extract a truffle that only grows on this mountain, in piles of offal. If you wanted to come gather it for me, I'm sure my mother would be so grateful... Hell, she'd probably kiss you." She smiled expectantly.

"I'd rather it if you kissed me," he blurted.

"I'm sure my husband wouldn't. Do you know, just the other day he pulled apart a round of wood with his bare hands? I swear he could break a man in half with the very slightest effort." She said cheerfully, skin prickling in revulsion. Some day she was going to have to tip something nasty into his ale.

Hal giggles awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his head. She could see him formulating excuses and hopefully a convenient reason to leave.

Instead of mercifully excusing himself from her presence, his face goes from ruddy to ashy white. And then he makes a grab for her.

She swats at his hands and steps backwards, startled and affronted, but her footing is bad.  Her ankle rolls on a rock, and she trips backwards into the chill water of the mountain stream.

She lay at the bottom, momentarily knocked breathless by the impact and the cold before thrashing her way up, screaming and cursing to beat hellfire. She grabs hold of a river stone, motivated to hurl it at Halfred's churlish head, but he had disappeared from the embankment.

She drags herself up out of the brook, dripping and panting in fury with her sodden skirts tugging her down. She struggles to calm her bloodlust and ragged breathing and just listens to the burbling of the stream for several long moments before realizing that the forest was completely silent. There was no birdsong, no rustling of leaves. Even the wind held its breath. The only thing she could hear was the wheezing huff of something breathing behind her.

Something big.

The hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle. She squeezes the river stone in her hand and prays. _Please don’t be a troll,_ she thinks, and spins on her heel.

It’s worse than a troll.

She screams and throws her rock. A pained shriek lets her know her aim was true, but she doesn't stop to look. She lurches out of the stream and launches herself down the mountain path, cursing as she goes.

She trips over her waterlogged skirts twice, skinning her knee and the palms of her hands. She stops several frantic minutes later and leans on a tree, panting for breath to listen while she fumbles with her skirts.

She didn’t see the monster following her, but she can hear something large moving in the undergrowth nearby. Her heart is pounding in her chest; she quickly folds the hem of her skirt up into her belt, showing an indecent amount of leg, and takes off again at a run.

The minutes drag on at a torturous pace and she loses track of where she is and how long it's been. She’s been running downhill, but she’s sure she should have broken the treeline by now.

She can’t get out. She’s lost. And worst of all she hears it behind her still; she can’t shake it, but when she casts glances over her shoulder, there is nothing. Her legs and lungs are in agony and she has a stitch in her side that burns like a brand. She can’t keep running. She’ll have to turn and fight.

She left her sickle behind with her basket. She has her sling though, and she remembers how to use it.

She dodges behind a tree again, grabbing a stone and fumbling to load it into the sling. A twig snaps and she spins on her heel, swinging the sling around to build momentum.

She catches a glimpse before she lets a fist-size rock fly with a yell. It's even worse at second glance, with its horrible, flat, noseless face, it’s wet brown eyes, its mottled green skin and long, sinewy limbs. Its appearance is belied by the sound it makes as her rock hits it with a meaty thud; a high, piping cry of pain. A surprisingly human sound.

She backs up and grabs another stone, winding the sling. The beast scrambles back from her, a bleeding dent in it's skull. It's eyes are white around the edges, like a spooked horse. It brings a webbed hand to the toothed slit that serves as it's mouth, hissing urgently. As she moves to release, a cloud of silvery white mist bursts from the creature’s paw, enveloping her, clogging her senses, weighting her eyes. Her fingers numb and drop the sling. Her last conscious thought is that it looked like the creature had been blowing her a kiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gwayne: a boy's name of Welsh origin, meaning "white hawk". Medieval spelling: Gawain.
> 
> How could I possibly resist.


	2. The Forgotten Spaces

Three times she tries to come back to herself. The first time, she is aware of something rapping against her forehead, and the nauseating sensation of being upside down, and swaying. She is happy to relinquish her hold on reality and all its attendant discomforts.

The second time, she is aware of red fox fire and the baying of hounds, hot breath, and something tugging at her hair. At first she is afraid, until she hears canine whining and feels a hot tongue on her face. She swats at Molly, her mother’s motley old bitch, and the annoying animal backs away so she can sleep. As she sank again, something niggles about Molly being gone for years, disappeared without a trace in the night. She was out again before the thought pierces her consciousness.

The third time, she awakens with an urgency that has her bolting upright and instantly regretting it. She cups her head with a moan; her skull pounds like the bell for mass is ringing inside it.

It takes several minutes for the pain to abate enough for her to open her eyes. She notes that she’s on a dusty fainting couch in front of an empty hearth, that she is freezing cold and caked with mud, and that she’s in a room she’s never seen before. She’s also not dead, which she counts to be rather extraordinary, considering what had transpired the last time she was conscious.

More important than any of that, though, she needs to piss and there’s not a damn chamberpot in sight.

Levering herself off of the couch is a challenge. She’s sore all over, from her crown to her feet, except for her toes, which are completely numb. She waddles to a sturdy wood plank door, one of two in the room, hoping to find a garderobe in which to relieve herself.

For the first time today she’s in luck; it is indeed a garderobe, or at least she supposes it is. Relief is sweet, and she considers the room around her now that her bladder is not pressing on her brain.

It’s… it’s an exceedingly pretty place to do one’s business. The walls are paneled wood and the mouldings on the doors were carved with flourishes, a costly and excessive detail for a water closet. It looks rather like something the Scotts would have in their demesne, where they a little more wealthy and a bit less practical. And Roxanne supposes that’s what puts her off about this room: who puts so much extravagance into the room where people spend the least amount of time? The room doesn’t even smell like a commode; instead it smells like lemongrass, and the sea.

Across from the commode is a silvered mirror. She moans in consternation when she sees her herself; ‘bedraggled’ is an understatement. Her _everything_ is covered in mud, and there are twigs and leaves snarled in her hair. When she tries to rub a smear of mud off her forehead, she discovers (painfully) that it’s not dirt, but flakes of dried blood and a bruise stretching from brow to hairline. She prods at it bleakly. She doesn’t remember hitting her head, but this absolutely explains her migraine.

She’ll have to avoid her mother for weeks. When she was a child, her mother would joke to anyone that would listen that Roxanne was obviously a farmer’s get; she had a field for a forehead. Roxanne could happily live the rest of her life without hearing what her mother had to say about her new bruise.

Below the mirror is a wash stand, but the basin is empty, of course. She considers it mournfully: she’d kill for something to drink, even tepid water, and her dress had been dull burgundy when she set out this morning. Now it’s a dusty brown, with an emphasis on dusty. Her skirt is so stiff it crackles when she moves and she leaves a rain of dust behind her. She badly needs a laundry. And a bath. And most definitely something to eat. In fact, almost every physical discomfort known to man is plaguing Roxanne about now.

“And least you didn’t have to piddle on the floor,” She mutters to herself as she sets her skirt to rights. The far wall is an hidden by a tall privacy screen, but this one doesn’t appear to be made of wood or cloth, but rather some sort of semi-opaque white sheeting, painted with mountains and trees and long-necked birds in flight, besieged by looming grey thunderheads. In the center of it all was an armored figure on horseback, attended by a servant in green geometrically-patterned robes and a pack of the daintiest black hunting dogs Roxanne had ever seen.

The screen really was quite beautiful, but strange, with its muted colors and delicate lines. She traced a finger over the warrior; his armor was foreign to her, layered in scaly plates and rendered by a careful hand in exacting detail. The helmet was overly large compared to the rest of the figure, flared and festooned with… she really wasn’t certain what that was. A thicket of curving, waving tendrils, like a profusion of horns. The armor was the prettiest shade of blue-black, like hellebore, or wet slate.

She felt as though she was touching a relic, and quickly took her hand away at the thought. Then she scoffed at her own folly. Here she was, mooning over this fine work that someone obviously didn’t care for more than as something to shove against a wall in their privy. Still, something about it enchanted her and made her forget her pains. She could almost hear leaves rustling in the wind when she looked at the trees, and hear the distant baying of the dogs.

And then something damp and cold landed on her stocking foot and she jerked backwards with a shriek, kicking it off.  

A frog bounced off the bottom of the screen and floundered on its back for a moment. When it righted itself it gave her a gimlet stare, then with a disgruntled croak it hopped out of sight beneath the screen, back the way it came.

She clucked and bent down to look where the frog had hit, worried that it had damaged the beautiful painting. She found no mark, but she discovered there was a soft light peeking under the base of the privacy screen.

Also, she still heard trees in the wind. And now birdsong.

Confused, she straightened and pulled aside the edge of the screen, and shielded her eyes with a curse as she was bathed in sunlight.

Squinting and scowling, she shaded her eyes against the sun and looked out, and what she saw stopped her breath. Her eyes wide with wonder, her discomforts forgotten, she stumbled into Paradise.

Her eyes caught on jewel tones, vibrant green leaves crowding up to the edge of water so blue and clear she feared she would step in and drink in that color, never to surface. Or want to.

Soft mist hung in the air and a warm, inviting breeze kissed her face and drew her forward. Even the basalt beneath her feet was warm, heated by a golden sun. She had left her world and its autumnal splendor behind for a land of eternal summer.

She fumbled with her ties, laughter bubbling up in her throat. She was battered and bedraggled by the Gods she was not unfortunate, and not fool enough to stand for a moment longer on the banks of the most beautiful pool in the world.

She dipped her toes in the water, then disturbed the silence and the stillness with a shriek of joy and a loud splash when she found the water to be hot. “Dear God,” she groaned rapturously, leaning her head against the rock on the edge of the pool. “Let me never leave this place.”

After a few minutes of bliss, the soreness was gone from her muscles. By the time she had finished cataloguing and tending to her wounds, they had stopped stinging so badly. Besides the bruise and cut on her forehead -which was bleeding sluggishly now that she’d cleaned it-, she had scraped her hands, skinned her knees and acquired a collection of bruises. In spite of them, she felt relaxed and restored. Even her headache had abated. She washed herself leisurely, and when she finished she virtuously set to trying to salvage her dress.

She did her best, but she had no soap and no washing bat, and there was nothing to do with the smears of grey-green where she’d slid on moss and grass. She drenched and wrung out her dress until the water ran clear, and then set it out to dry on the warm stones before she gave her chemise and stockings the same treatment. While her undergarments had been spared the worst of the mud, they were distinctly dingy, especially around the hem and on the soles. She sighed and set them with her dress, and was content to let herself float and contemplate everything she had seen.

She realized that everything here had the air of something very grand that was somehow diminished. Everything was just slightly off, as if this place had been broken and when someone had tried to mend it the pieces hadn’t fit together properly. Or more aptly, they had used pieces from other things to try and fill in the gaps. The faded, understated drawing room she’d woken in had seemed as though it was waiting for an erstwhile servant to come set it to rights, and the bathroom, well. The bathroom was the bathroom, with all its strange incongruities and foreign artefacts.

Everything here was very fine, but the shrewd bookkeeper in her and the practical housekeeper had her frowning at the foolishness of whoever owned this property, which might be a certain flat-faced turtle-backed crosspatch bastard of a frog and a monkey she had made acquaintance with. That would go a ways towards explaining the bathroom opening directly to a pond with only a flimsy screen as a barrier.

She jerked when it occurred to her that perhaps that abomination had been the very sorcerer she had sought out. No one had ever seen him, outside of Gwayne and Lady Scott, and they both were stiff and silent on the subject, so she never pushed. All anyone knew about the sorcerer was that he was old, male, powerful and dangerous with his craft, that he had a vicious temper, a worse sense of humor, and that he was terrible to behold.

Roxanne had assumed he would be something like a wizened, twisted old hunchback, perhaps with one eye and a shriveled hand. In her wildest imaginings, she’d never considered that the sorcerer might not be human at all.

Her heart pounds and her breath shortens, and the gentle lapping of the water cannot forestall her panic. Once again it dawns on her that seeking out the sorcerer -for all she admired his skill and the intelligence and wit behind his creations-, was foolhardy in the extreme, especially when her motivation amounted to fascination and curiosity.

She was out of the water and pulling on her damp chemise in an instant. She’d had more than enough adventure for today. It would be best if she found her way to the exit. Hopefully she would be able to find her way home. She glanced at the otherworldly pool in the summer sun and wryly amended that she hoped to find her own world first.

She slung her dress and stockings over her shoulder and slogged towards the painted screen, conspicuous against the foliage around it, and yet seeming like it had every right to be there. She ran careful fingers over it in farewell before she breezed through the profligate bathroom and into the drawing room.

She spared a quick glance, hoping to find her shoes. She froze when she caught sight of the fire crackling merrily in the hearth, a hearth that had been cold as old bone and strung with cobwebs when she’d left this room; this room that had now been dusted and swept.

She was not alone here.

She strode for the second, unexplored door as panic crested in her breast. Now was most certainly a good time to leave.

She’s pulling open the door when she hears it; a low, reverberating growl. A black muzzle with sharp, curved teeth jams itself in the gap between the door and the frame.

There’s a pissed-off animal trying to get into the room with her. A big one.

Her breath hisses through her teeth as she shifts her weight and pushes her shoulder against the door, hoping the animal will pull back and retreat. She doesn’t really wish to hurt it. Instead the jaws in the doorway flash and snap, furious and unwilling to get out of the way. Roxanne had assumed it was a dog, but the sound it makes is a horrible croaking bark, and as she looks she realizes there’s something very, very wrong.

The muzzle has no fur. It doesn’t even have skin; it’s just skull, with sharp, exposed teeth, but shiny and greenish black, like the carapace of a beetle.

Roxanne stops thinking and _shoves_ on the door, pressing with all her body weight. The bony maw yelps. She can hear it grinding against the frame as she pushes. Looped by fear, her only thought is that she hopes she breaks it.

In the space of a breath, things go catastrophically wrong. A force slams against the other side of the door. Not expecting the resistance, Roxanne cries out when she’s pushed backwards and the door opens wide to let in a swarm of demons from the depths of hell itself; a legion of disembodied skulls, growling and barking in horrible synchrony like harbingers of the end times. The sockets of their eyes are overtaken with crystalline growths; each head is anointed with a fell crown of jagged quartz spikes wreathed in fingers of blue-white lightning. Each forehead is overtaken by a single slitted eye, glowing red with hellfire.

The swarm turns its blazing gaze upon her soul, and Roxanne _runs_.

She races across a room that suddenly stretches out for miles, every second slowing down to a crawling infinity of waiting for the first set of jaws to hamstring her. The door to the garderobe is before her but when she stretches out her hand it slides away, out of reach, always out of reach. Roxanne is distantly aware that time and space are not as they should be, but the demons are close behind. Their baying is deafening, she can feel the air of them snapping their jaws inches away from her ankles. She hears something ripping; her dress is yanked off her shoulder, her stockings go flying. Next time it could be her arm.

She feels the room mocking her. The door will never come. She will die here, a few scant feet from safety. Fear spikes in her chest, and she stretches for the door again. “Let me in!” She screams.

Space snaps like taffy pulled too tight. Roxanne rockets forward into the door at full speed, bowling it open. She trips on her momentum and throws her hands out to catch her fall, one wrist buckling and flaring in pain. She rolls on flagstone floors in a spacious, well-lit room that is certainly NOT the garderobe.

She scrambles to her knees, holding her sprained wrist to her chest, her eyes on the swarm. They hover in the doorway, filling it from jamb to floor, whining like chastened puppies and snapping at each other. Something is keeping them from entering the room. Roxanne stumbles to her feet, grips the edge of the door and slams it shut on all those staring red eyes with instructions on where they should go. She can hear yelping and scraping on the other side of the door for a moment before it quiets and fades away. She is safe, she thinks. For now.

A glance tells her she’s in somebody’s kitchen. Unlike the drawing room with its stately, forlorn dust, this kitchen is clean and worn in with use. There is a fire on the hearth and a cauldron that, from the smell of it, is full of stew. Before it is a rough-hewn table set with two chairs. She wobbles over to it on watery legs, collapses in the chair closest to the fire, and lets herself shake. Tears bite at her eyes and she leans over her knees, covering her face with her hands. Inside her a void yawns, sickening and dizzying. Her ears ring, and she gulps for air like water, making her head float and her vision darken. Tears slip between her fingers. Roxanne stops being okay. She is not okay for many painful minutes.

Finally she collapses against the tabletop, still hiccuping out light sobs. Her head throbs again; from dehydration or her bruised forehead, she doesn’t know. With Herculean effort she drags herself out of her chair. There’s a pitcher on the counter across from her; she reaches for it and hopes it’s full of something she can drink.

She puts the rim to her lips and drinks greedily; it turns out to be a sweet wine and Roxanne feels that somewhere out there is a trickster god who can’t decide whether they love her or want her dead. Roxanne wishes they’d just decide and get it over with, but in the meantime quaffing her fill of wine seems to be a good answer to her problems. By the time she’s done the shoulders of her chemise are damp with white wine and she’s beyond caring about anything: she is in her underthings in a stranger’s house, it’s not like she can be much more improper at this point. In the same vein her trespasses are enough that she’s willing to add a bowl of purloined stew on top of them.

She finds crockery, including a cloche with a ball of fresh dough that looks to have been abandoned before it could be baked. She takes the cloche to the hearth and covers it in coals, and serves herself a healthy serving of stew. It smells delicious, and her stomach rumbles as if she needs reminding that it’s been clawing at her spine since she woke.

She sits and immediately burns her mouth, trying to eat it too quickly. Disgruntled, she forces herself to slow down and cool each bite with her breath.

It _is_ delicious; the meat is venison so soft it dissolves on her tongue. There are onions and potatoes and turnips, and carrots that are delightfully soft and savory. The stock is so thick it’s almost a gravy. Between the repast and the frankly regrettable quantity of wine, Roxanne is beginning to feel good about life again. She takes a second to reflect as she gets up to help herself to another bowl that this place seems to throw good and bad at her in equal proportions. She winces at the implication that hell is looming over her, waiting to cap off her meal with another period of terror. Maybe if she keeps going back for more stew she can put it off indefinitely. She brings the rest of wine with her, just for good measure.

Her theory is dashed when, halfway through her second bowl, the door slams open and the host of skulls spills into the kitchen, howling.

Roxanne jumps, but finds her nerves are a lot steadier this second time. It is possible she is quite a little much tipsy. She takes another bite and watches in amusement as half the host darts around the room, yapping, belatedly looking for her while the other half pins her down with eyes of arcane fire. It takes a few seconds for the swarm to get on the same page. She’s in no hurry. She keeps eating until she has their undivided attention, and then addresses them.

“Since you haven’t ripped me to pieces yet I’d appreciate it if you waited another half hour or so. I have bread in the oven, and if I have to die I’m taking all the stew with me.” She tells them, still chewing.

The swarm stares at her, and then surprises her by turning to each other and clicking as though conferring on the matter.

“If you’ll behave yourselves, I’ll allow you to stay and keep me company while we wait.” She said graciously. That seemed to decide them. They yip and disperse, flurrying through the room. Some go to the cauldron, some sniff at the cloche, some come flitter at her skirts. One particularly brazen one that was crusted with opals squirreled into her lap next to her injured hand and nipped at her spoon.

She quirked an eyebrow at her guest. “Excuse you, this was not part of the deal. I did not agree to this.” The skull whuffles at her and bares its teeth. Roxanne gets the impression it’s grinning, more so than a skull might normally do. She huffs. “Fine, suit yourself. Mind my wrist, though. If you pain me, I’m evicting you.” The skull whines and she takes that for agreement, and sets back into her food.

Something crashes on her left and shaves a few seconds off her rapidly dwindling lifespan. The skulls had knocked the butter crock on the ground and were now staring at the mess and conferring quietly with each other as though they were village council trying to settle a dispute. They had also managed to open every single cupboard and get into a sack of flour, condemning a quarter of the kitchen to a powdery death.

Roxanne opens her mouth to tell them off, then realizes it’s not her kitchen, and she doesn’t actually care to expend energy on wrangling a horde of the undead to spare the good crockery. Feeling oddly light, she makes a note to keep them away from her pitcher and looks back to her bowl, only to find her guest has disappeared halfway inside it.

“Hey! You slipgrace son of a succubus, get out of my food!” She scolds, trying to grip it with her good hand. It’s hard; the skull is slippery. She finds it to be made of metal. _Of course,_ she thinks sardonically. _To set all those pretty opals, Roxanne._ The only orifices she can grip are either lined with sharp teeth, or perilously close to sharp teeth. Eventually she hooks a finger in a hole at the base of its head and pulls it away from her now-empty bowl. She delivers a withering look to her officially unwelcome guest, still hooked on her finger and licking its chops with a shadowy tongue and altogether too pleased with itself.

“You disgust me,” she tells it, and shakes it off her hand. “Begone, jackanapes.”

The skull yips and floats away. Roxanne is sure it would be whistling if it but had the means to do so. She sighs and shakes her head as she gets up to refill her bowl. A flock of beggars flit at her feet, hoping for her to drop a morsel. “I’d wonder if you could eat at all if I hadn’t just been a victim of robbery,” she tells them. She eyes the empty space beneath their jaws skeptically. “Where do you put it?” They open expectant jaws towards her in answer. Roxanne tells herself she feeds them each a bit of meat to stave off getting bitten, and not because she’s a soft touch. As she feeds them they gurgle and click, and she notices for each mouth she drops a bite into two more appear until the whole host is crowded around her and the hearth in a cloud, jockeying for a treat.

And that is the tableau she presents when the door slams open once more. She looks over her shoulder, not even perturbed this time.

The embodiment of menace stands in the doorway, roiling with lightning and staring her down with eyes of witchfire green.

 _Well_ , she thinks, turning to face him. _I think I found the sorcerer._


	3. Their Evil Gifts

She was expecting a wizened old man. That is not what she got.

Her first impression is 'not human'. He looks like a festival mummer; his head is too large for the slender stalk of his neck. And his skin is blue. Truly, vividly blue. Somewhere in the range between chicory blossom and cornflower, Roxanne decides. The shade is much too pretty for someone so threatening. The fingers of lightning (real, honest-to-god lightning) he's sweeping from his shoulders and shaking from the folds of his riding cape make the danger clear. _God I hope he doesn’t know who I am,_ she prayed.

His eyes dart between her, the bowl in her hand, and her cloud of bones. His eyes are green, bright like new grass and rimmed with black kohl, with vulpine cunning shining in them like candle flame.

"I don't suppose," he murmurs silkily, "that there's a chance you haven't eaten entirely all of my dinner." His boot heels click hollowly on the floor as he stalks towards her. Roxanne gropes out behind her; she knows that it's somewhere back and just to her left, where-- yes, good, there it is. She grips wrought iron in her hand and holds it as tight as she can, nestling it in her skirts. Unfortunately it's in her bad hand, and her head is swimming from drink, but there's no helping that now.

Everyone knows iron burns faeries; blisters their skin like hellfire. He may be no Fair Folk (he certainly wasn't very fair to look at), but Roxanne was sure that with the proper application- namely, to his gratuitous crown- she had a slim chance of salvation. Her cloud yips and whimpers. A cold metal nose nuzzles her hand, sniffing at her weapon.

The sorcerer slows his approach. His hands are held palm-up in supplication, but his fox eyes are narrowed in scrutiny. "Come now, there's no need for that. It's poor form to batter your host, you know. Especially after you've eaten his food."

"Stay away from me." She warned quietly. "I've managed to avoid dying or killing anyone today, and I'd like to continue on that way."

"Murder would be just about the only social transgression you haven't committed." He said with a grin that would have been an invitation to join in the jest if only his teeth weren't so many and so sharp. "Thievery, trespassing... not to mention you've charmed my dogs. You know, I have it on good authority that witchery is discouraged where you come from." He drawled as he took another slow step forward.

"Don't come any closer." She warned. She raised the poker up threateningly and tried not to let the pain of the movement show in her face.

The sorcerer pursed his lips, a frightening look crossing on his face like a shadow, before being replaced with practiced boredom. His eyes flicked away from her face and he clicked his tongue. "Fetch."

Roxanne yelped as a shining black blur wrenched the poker from her grasp, her wrist screaming at the way her arm twisted at her attempt to keep hold. She nearly overturned, wobbling on her feet, bracing against the hearth wall to regain her balance. She clasped her right arm to her chest, feeling each pulse as angry heat palpitating against her ulna. One of the skulls cavorted around the sorcerer, her poker clamped in its jaws. It whined eagerly, and received a pet from one leather-gloved hand. The sorcerer's eyes bore into her the whole time, smug with victory.

"Good dog, well done. The rest of you, heel." He ordered sharply.

Her cloud whimpers and shivers, but doesn't move from her back. The sorcerer purses his lips.

"You've had your fun and it's over. Come." The demand rings magically, a metallic twang like a sword drawn from a sheath. Her hounds stirred, yowled and barked at the challenge, but still they did not leave her.

"Really?” He snapped, running out of patience. Whatever he was doing stopped, though, and the tension broke out of the air. “And why, exactly, is that?”

The cloud fluffed around her, yapping. His face pulled into a mask of incredulity as he listened. (Roxanne wondered if all his expressions were quite so large- did it come with having so much head to work with?)

“That’s ludicrous, absolutely no one would do that." he said hotly, tilting his face so his brows shadowed his eyes. "I am tired, hungry, and vexed beyond the limits of my mercy. I don't care what she promised you, you will obey me or by The Bright One and all the Stars I will stuff all of you in a box together and leave you there."

The skulls stilled, whining. The opal-eyed one drifted forward, hovering just in front of her shoulder, and croaked.

The sorcerer listened to Opal Eyes (better sounding than Jackanapes, and just as fitting, Roxanne thought) with an expression of peeved impatience. "I have no intention of doing that."

Opal Eyes gargled at him, and the rest of the dog skulls took up the call in a chorus of shiver-inducing yelps. Roxanne shuddered.

The sorcerer winced and rubbed at his temples as if to forestall a migraine. "Fine! Fine. I don’t care, yes, you can, and no, I won't. Now move your pet; I want dinner. But if she so much as touches me, it's coming out of all of you." He growled, finger outstretched in warning.

The skulls yipped and suddenly flurried around her, tumbling and cavorting. Teeth caught on her sleeves and hem and even her hair, pulling her sideways away from the hearth. She stumbled and protested, swatting at them, but they were persistent and forceful enough to pull her away without ripping her clothing or hurting her, so she was herded away and forced to stand still  while her swarm of miscreants nuzzled up against her and panted in her ear and begged for pats. A pet indeed, she thought, wrinkling her nose and shoving metallic muzzles and their shadowy, overly-friendly tongues out of her face.

The sorcerer cleared the remaining distance between him and supper in two long steps, taking a moment to check the cloche (nowhere near done) before stirring the skin off the stew and lift a ladleful to his face. He took one delicate sniff and his face crumpled in disgust. He pitched the ladle back into the stew and wheeled away, sweeping towards his larder.

Don't say anything, don't engage, don't catch his attention, don't-- "That stew is delicious, you know." Dammit, Roxanne.

"Then you eat it," he rasped, rifling through a cold chest and pulling out a hunk of hard white cheese and a cluster of succulent-looking grapes. He grabbed a trencher and a goblet from a cupboard on his way back towards her, but stopped short at the counter, looking for something with increasing confusion. "Where's--?" He turned back towards her, eyes accusatory before they landed on the kitchen table and the innocent pitcher resting thereon.

His expression smoothed out into terrifying blankness. He closed his eyes and inhaled hard through his nose, and Roxanne could hear him counting to ten in his head and willing himself not to kill a woman in his kitchen. Apparently it worked; instead of striking her down with lightning, he stalked over to the table and plunked down at the chair opposite hers, setting the dinnerware clattering. He poured himself a scant cupful of wine and sighed at the empty carafe before turning displeased green eyes at her.

She shrugged at him, feeling remorseless. "If you'd had the day I'd had, you'd have gotten into your cups too."

"If you'd had the day I'd had, you'd be passed out drunk under the table by now." He growled. "Don't just stand there. Sit, if you're staying." He said grudgingly, popping a grape in his mouth.

Roxanne pursed her lips and watched him out of the corner of her eye as she ladled herself another serving. A couple of her boney entourage had floated away from her when the sorcerer had pulled food from his cold chest and were shamelessly begging. The rest had stayed with her and were also shamelessly begging. She ignored them in favor of eavesdropping.

"You're not even supposed  to be in here." He reprimanded, popping bits of fruit and cheese into his mouth. "What do you have to say for yourselves?"

The sorcerer listened intently to the way they clacked back. She sidled warily over to the table, her cloud hovering around her. She fluttered her hand at Opal Eyes when it floated too close to her bowl as she slid into her seat.

"That's a poor excuse for breaking the rules when I find you here begging for treats rather than doing anything useful." He snarked, reaching out and flicking a metallic snout, fast enough to avoid getting nipped by vicious teeth.

The whole horde chattered in at that, making such a racket that Roxanne winced and moved to cover her ears, leaving her bowl of stew defenseless to Opal Eye's depredations. It was muzzle-deep in her bowl in a flash, to her instant and vocal dismay.

" **_Enough_ **." The sorcerer slammed his hands down on the tabletop with all the power, impact and danger of a crack of lightning. Her entourage scattered for a moment like a school of frightened minnows before coalescing again. Roxanne couldn't blame them; she had her feet off the floor and was gripping the seat of her chair so hard she'd broken a nail. He slumped back in his seat and scrubbed a hand over his face, sighing. She could physically see him fighting to release his anger in the way his breath hitched in his chest.

He was all in black, and she wondered briefly who he was mourning. His clothes speak of good means and good sense; his high-collared doublet is damask and it hangs partially open and askew as if he left off removing it halfway through to come bandy words with her. She squints at the buttons on his doublet; silver tarnished with an ugly burgundy-brown. It looks awful against the fine fabric of his vest. She had noted previously that his boots where old, but polished to a shine, and that his trews were well-worn but sturdy.

"You'll have to forgive me for not changing. I was in a bit of a rush when I was told a stranger had the run of my home. I'm afraid changing out of blood-soaked clothing was not my highest priority." He said suddenly, snapping her out of her staring, not that he wasn't staring back. His gaze was gimlet, challenging. Roxanne had looked a little too hard and a little too long, it seemed.

“Who--” she croaked, cleared her throat, tried again. “Who’s blood, exactly, is it?”

“Ah, what shall I say to that?” He slumped back, gesturing sardonically. “Shall I tell you it came from a baby? Or perhaps it's the blood from an entire basket of kittens? Why don’t I just tell you it’s the blood of an innocent. That should about cover it, I think. Fits in nicely with what I know of your human expectations.” He snorted.

“What would you know of my expectations?” She grumbled before she could stop herself. She bit into her stew mulishly, eating his food and keeping her drunken mouth occupied at the same time.

“I can say with certainty that you didn’t expect to end up here.” He said, still lounging indecently in his chair, limbs all askew, legs trailing under the table like wandering ivy. He rubbed a grape idly against his lower lip, seemingly so involved in observing her that he forgot about eating it. “How did you come to be on my mountain? And today, of all days.”

“My legs brought me here,” she answered smartly. “What do you mean, today of all days?” Today was Dahn Gruis, but that just meant feasting and dancing in the village, and a sacrifice to Dahn, the God of the Harvest as tribute for the golden months to come and the bounty to get through winter. Roxanne had picked today because it would be harder to miss her with corn cakes in one hand and an ale in the other as the festivities got underway.

“If you don’t mind your tongue, you’re going to leave this mountain with your legs on backwards.” He groused, finally popping the grape in his mouth and leaning forward, bracing his arms on the table. “It’s the first day of Autumn. It’s also a full moon tonight.” He told her with the air of a person who likes telling people things just to show off that he knows them.

The full moon was an auspicious sign, but she didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

“And the significance of that… is…?” She asked leadingly. Her dogs all yapped at once. Apparently she was the only one who DIDN’T know.

“I suppose I could spend several hours telling a human peasant about the intricacies of the lunar cycle and its effects on the tides as well as the ambient magic at a sympathetic mage’s disposal and how that in turn is affected by solstices and equinoxes as a function of how much nighttime one gets, as well as how the collective belief surrounding your primitive religious machinations gains a lot of unsavory attention, or I suppose I could just tell you that it means faeries like partying and you decided to wander onto my mountain just before a Wild Hunt.”

Roxanne felt the blood leech out of her face with an icy prickle. She bolted up from the table, slamming her thighs into the bottom and jolting everything on the surface. She swore and pressed at her skirts. Damn, that hurt.

“Here now,” The sorcerer cried, grapes rolling around the table top. The ones that fell got snapped up in shadowy jaws before they could so much as bounce off the floor. “What’s this? Where do you think you’re going?”

“I have to warn my village. We have to get everyone inside--” She scrabbled for her thoughts, striding for the door. The dogs whimpered and swirled around her, forgotten.

There hadn’t been a Wild Hunt since before she was born, but according to Old Geral, humans were the favored game. The unwary fell prey to faerie lords and ladies who would turn them into boars or hares or harts and strike them down, else snatching up the pretty and the young and whisking them away for their pleasures. Would Gwayne be able to do anything? Everyone knew faeries hated iron and couldn't pass a line of salt at a lintel or windowsill. Maybe the smith and the farrier could help. Would they have to break into the salt stores? That could be devastating. She'd done the calculations herself; there was much left to preserve for the winter.   

Lost in her thoughts, she reached for the door.

A blue hand slammed against it, inches from her face, startling the spit out of her. She jerked and found the sorcerer hemming her in, uncomfortably close, expression peeved. He smelled like petrichor and ozone, wet leather, and underneath that, an unidentifiable but pleasant spice.

“Did you hear anything I just said?” He demanded. Roxanne shook her head mutely, tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. He sighed theatrically, throwing his eyes and shoulders into it. She’d never seen someone throw their emotions around so liberally.

“I told you not to bother. The Hunt is over, and aside from that, use your head. How many times has the village been raided by a faerie hunting party? In your lifetime, we'll make it simple."

“Never...” She answered reluctantly. She tugged at the door weakly; he gave her such a dirty look, she let go of the handle and did not try again.

“Never! Fabulous. How old are you? Twenty-something? I'll tell you now, this is not the first celestial movement in two decades that would catch the Seelie Court's attention. In fact, I can tell you that your village hasn't had an issue with Wild Hunts in three decades, although there have been plenty of hunts in that time. And oh, but what a marvelous coincidence!" He exclaimed with a manic smile. "Three decades! That is also when I came to be here! Tell me, human, do you think those two things might hypothetically, possibly, potentially, be in the slightest way related? Hmm?” He asked as if he were talking to someone very stupid, eyebrows arching high.

“You mean to tell me that you’ve been keeping the faeries at bay for thirty years?” She frowned, finding that hard to believe. “Why would you do that for us?”

“You give yourself too much credit,” he scoffed, pushing off the door. She turned to watch him as he looped back towards the table. “I have my own reasons for interfering, be grateful and we’ll leave it at that.”

“Is it true you keep all the magical creatures out of the valley?” She asks. “Other places, you get stories about unicorns and pixies and dryads and some such but we’re lucky to ever see more than a troll or a stray gnome. Is that your doing?”

He quirks an eyebrow. "See, now you get it. Yes, I restrict many creatures to the confines of the mountain, and discourage the rest from entering the valley.”

“Why would you do that? You have no right,” she grasps her skirts, fingers trembling.

“I have every right in the world,” he says airily. “But if it distresses you so much, I could let the barrier go and allow the Hunt and every other nasty thing on this mountain to sweep into your village. I’ll be sure to let your neighbors know who to thank for the influx of mayhem, would that please you?” His eyes glitter as he watches her. “You hadn’t considered that there were bad things out there, had you? That perhaps I might be doing things up on this mountain besides conniving to send beasties to harass you humans and diddling my private parts when it doesn't work."

Roxanne blinked, utterly poleaxed and a little scandalized. "You are nothing like I expected." She muttered without thinking.

The sorcerer threw back his bald head and cackled.

"No," he chuckled. "I don't suppose I would be."

The door creaked, and Roxanne looked just in time to see the crosspatch bastard frog monster stick it's horrid head in the room. She swore and threw herself against the door, jamming something's head in there for the second time that day. The frog thing yelped and garbled. She could hear it's claws scrabbling on the other side of the wood.

"Stop that," the sorcerer snapped, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her away. "That's my manservant. From what I hear you've battered him enough for one day."

"That's your manservant?!" She hissed, backing away towards the relative safety of her cloud of bones as the hulking creature shuffled into the room, rubbing at it's maw with unnaturally long, boney fingers. There were four on each hand, connected with webbed flesh and tipped with sharp claws, and Roxanne couldn't help but notice they were crusted with dirt and dried blood.

The frog creature eyed her warily and ground out something in a lilting foreign tongue.

"Is that demonspeak? What is it saying about me?" Roxanne asked. The creature glared at her.

"No, it's a language spoken in the Far East, and he says he came to make sure you hadn't murdered me yet. He assures me you're quite vicious." The sorcerer said idly, going to ladle out a bowl of stew and pull the cloche out of the hearth. "Shit, the bread burned." He pouted.

The frog creature skirted around her, hissing something out as he examined the blackened bread and accepted the bowl from his master.

"No, she did." The sorcerer responded, resuming his spot at the table and chewing on another grape.

The creature growled, peering into the cauldron and then baring it's teeth at her accusingly.

"And the wine too," the sorcerer agreed.

The creature thunked down in the second chair petulantly and mumbled a response.

"Certainly not, but we're going to have to do something with her." He said thoughtfully, rolling a grape around on the table and sizing her up.

She straightened her back and summoned all dignity she could. Which was, admittedly, not very much at the moment. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well obviously we have to make some kind of example out of you, or everyone will think they can just wander up here and eat my dinner." The sorcerer explained as of it were the most obvious thing in the world. His 'manservant' chuckled darkly between spoonfuls.

"I really wouldn't recommend it." She said stiffly. Her knuckles creaked. She forced herself to loosen her fists and tried very hard not to show fear.

The sorcerer scoffed. "Oh, don't give me that. It probably won't even hurt that much."

She looked to her cloud of companions. They panted and lolled their tongues at her, but offered nothing more.

"You're no help at all." She muttered waspishly. Opal Eyes floated up to her and licked her whole face, from chin to crown. She sputtered and wiped at ethereal saliva while the sorcerer and the frog thing laughed.

The sorcerer opened his mouth to speak when a roar like thunder shook the room. Roxanne clapped her hands to her ears and almost lost her footing. The sorcerer and the frog demon looked to be in the same shape, wearing uniform grimaces. The skulls darted around the room like an agitated flock of starlings, adding to the confusion.

The sorcerer mouthed something and made a gesture, and the roar quieted down to a muffled rumble.

"No rest for the wicked," the frog demon sighed, and made to get up again.

"Nope," the sorcerer agreed cheerfully as he pushed the creature back into it's chair and stood. "Which is why I'm dealing with it. Finish your meal." He strode towards the door, pointing at Roxanne as he went. "You. Come with me."

Her dogs whined unhappily, instantly making her nervous.

"Why?" She asked cautiously.

The sorcerer stopped with his hand on the door and stared at her incredulously. "Firstly, because I have a feeling this is somehow your fault. Secondly, because I told you to, and thirdly, because I will make all the teeth rot out of your head if you don't." He opened the door meaningfully with a mocking flourish. Beyond the portal was a shifting corridor of smokey darkness.

"I suppose I can't argue with that," she grumbled, and with only minor hesitation, strode through.

"I thought not." He drawled, closing the door behind them and casting them into absolute black for a long, claustrophobic moment. A ball of blue witchfire sprung into being, sparking between the mage's fingers. He offered his elbow to her as if he were simply escorting her through market. She took it with trepidation.

They walked that way for several minutes, locked arm in arm. The silence was awkward, punctuated only with the intermittent rumbling. Roxanne discovered why he had offered assistance; the floor behaved like wet silt under her bare feet, bunching and slipping. Abruptly he brought them to a stop, reaching out and pushing against the dark. She sighed in relief as a sliver opened in space, presenting her with a well-lit, solid, perfectly respectable room. Granted it was a tiny room, carved out of hard grey stone with no coverings or windows, and there was no furniture of any kind, but still. It had wasn't made of shadows; she would take it.

The only distinguishing feature of the room was another portal, also featuring a shifting darkness. It was contained in wooden frame, carved and painted with flowing runes. The rumbling was louder here.

"What does this say? I've never seen script like this before." She asked, reaching out to run her fingers over the carvings.

"Roughly speaking, it's a set of enchantments designed to protect this doorway and insulate it from the outside. They haven't been tested like this before; I'm gratified to see they haven't even sprung a leak." He sounded pleased, running his fingers over the carvings as well. When he did it, they shimmered under his fingertips.

"Sprung a leak?" Roxanne cocked her head. Had she misunderstood something?

The sorcerer hummed in confirmation. "I think we found the source of the noise." He waved his hand over the portal and it flashed before fading to translucency. Roxanne's heart dropped with terror and she slammed herself against the portal, banging on a solid surface she couldn't see. "Gwayne!"

Her husband was suspended in the frame as if flying, but his hair and clothes flowed around him and bubbles of air were drifting from his lips. He slammed with single-minded desperation at the portal, looking panicked. He was trapped in the formless dark she'd just walked through, only filled with water, with no way out. Gwayne was not a normal man, but even he had to breathe.

"Do you think he's been holding his breath this whole time?" The sorcerer mused, sounding impressed.

"What are you doing?! Let him go! Can't you see he's drowning?!" She flung herself at the sorcerer, gripping his fine tunic in his hands.

His eyes flared wide in shock that she'd dared touch him, before he scowled down at her. "Your concern for your defender is admirable. Touching, even." He appraised her, looking her over as if examining her for faults. "You know, when I first saw you, I thought you looked vaguely familiar; you humans, you look so alike. But I do know you, don't I?" He looked down at his front, at her hands fisted in his tunic. At her marriage band. "I watched your wedding."

Roxanne felt shivers creep up her spine. "Let him go," she said tremulously. "Please."

"A please! Oh, she must mean it." He said mockingly. He leaned in so close his breath ghosted her cheeks, eyes glowing. "Tell me dear, what will you do to secure the life of your husband?" He gritted that last word out, husband, as if it were poison.

Don't ever promise a faerie anything, Roxanne. Never give them a piece of you, your name, your blood, your hair. Never make a deal with the Fair Folk. Never go to the mountain. But she had; she'd been stupid, and she'd done it anyway, and now her best friend was in danger. This was all her fault.

"Take me instead." She said without hesitation.

He blinked. And then smiled with his too-sharp teeth. "Fascinating. I accept."

Roxanne started shaking. She pulled away to hide it. "Excellent, now let him go!"

"Oh, my dear, my pet." He purred, still grinning. "With absolute pleasure." He offered his arm again. She took it, and he steered her towards the portal, and Gwayne's stressed face.

They as they passed the threshold, the barrier that had been solid for her flexed outwards, pushing a startled Gwayne backwards out of the way. The barrier closed behind them, and then popped free with a wobble, enclosing them in a huge, perfect bubble that began to float upwards. Gwayne looked between the bubble and the threshold, and Roxanne realized she had made a grave mistake. The threshold looked the same from the outside as it had from the inside; a carved frame with a gaping whole in the middle. Only it was set into rock and obscured with pond weeds as if submerged, for instance, in the bottom of a lake.

She looked up. Far above, she could see starlight through the surface of still water. The sorcerer began to laugh quietly.

"He was never in any danger. Was he." It wasn't a question. She felt sick. Oh god, what had she done?

"He was there because he chose to be," the sorcerer affirmed.

"You," she whispered furiously. "You tricked me!" She turned on him and raised a hand to strike him.

"Ah ah," he tutted, catching her wrist. "I did no such thing. You made an assumption, and then a request, and then an offer, all on your own. All I did was accept." He leaned in, fingers biting into her arm. "And now your life is mine, do you understand? Not like when you so foolishly offered it to my dogs over a bowl of stew, either. You are mine." His eyes glowed with a whisper of amber fire, and a streamer of lighting flared around his knuckles and danced down over her arm. She whimpered and braced for pain, but the shock never came; just a buzzing tickle that set all of her hair on end. The lightning arched over her heart and disappeared into her chest without a trace.

"Let go of me," she whispered, more thoroughly terrified than she had ever been in her life.

"For now," the sorcerer said with satisfaction, releasing her arm. She held it to her chest and lurched sideways away from him, as far as she could manage in a bubble the size of a one-horse wagon.

"Be ready to walk. We're reaching the surface." He said genially.

Roxanne looked up, and then down in shock. They had made it most of the way there without her noticing. Gwayne was trailing just behind them with a look of furious determination on his face, the lake bed lost behind him in the gloom.

The bubble jerked to a stop. She blocked the sorcerer when he reached out to take her by the arm again, taking quick steps to stay even with him as the bubble climbed up onto shore. He smirked but let the slight pass.

Gwayne rose out of the black water behind them, a darkly shining shape in the moonlight. The sorcerer clapped his hands and balls of foxfire sprang to life in the air around them as the bubble began to dissolve.

"Roxanne!" Gwayne cried, rushing towards her. He angled his body to put himself between her and the sorcerer while still being able to keep an eye on him. Then he proceeded to speak all at once. "Are you alright? I've been looking for you all day. Gods, I was so worried. Are you hurt? Why are-- where are your clothes?! Did he hurt you?!" Gwayne, normally sunny and smiling, turned as stormy as a thunderhead and turned on the sorcerer in a blink of an eye, a crackling with aggression. "I swear, if you so much as touched her--"

"Do you mean to tell me she doesn't normally dress like that?" The sorcerer deadpanned, completely unimpressed with Gwayne's posturing.

Roxanne looked down at her bare feet and wine stained chemise. She was sure she should be offended, but emotions seemed so hard and far away right now.

"You've crossed the line," Gwayne growled.

"Actually, she crossed the line. I'm not even sure how she got up here. As you noticed, we weren't accepting visitors today. But I did hold onto her for you, and I even fed her dinner. You're welcome." The sorcerer sketched a mocking bow. "Keep a closer eye on her next time. There's all kinds of unsavory folk about." He said with a feral grin.

Gwayne growled and turned back to her, reaching for her. She reached back; the warmth of his skin was welcome. It kept her grounded when she felt like she was floating away. (Oh god what had she done)

"Come on, Roxanne." Gwayne murmured softly. "I'm taking you home."

"Oh Roxanne," the sorcerer called sweetly. Roxanne jolted as if shocked; hearing her name on his lips felt like having her soul tugged on with a thousand tiny fishhooks. In a few words, horribly fucking unpleasant. "You'll be coming back here every fortnight, on each full and new moon. I hope that's not a problem," he said serenely.

"Yeah, like hell she is." Gwayne scoffed and steered her away. "Come on, Roxanne."

"I wasn't asking you, boy."

Roxanne felt it coming. Her body felt tight as if the air was squeezing her, and then with a pop and a rush of vertigo, she was out of Gwayne's arms and several yards away, by the sorcerer's side like a dog on a leash. Her knees went weak and she let herself collapse, shaking and fighting the nausea. For one wild moment she considered throwing up on the sorcerer's legs.

"What are you playing at," Gwayne asked in that quiet voice of his, the one he only rarely used. The one he saved for letting people know he was past joking about a thing.

"To put it bluntly, Roxanne traded her life to me. Yes, stupid, I agree. Oh, don't look so betrayed, she thought she was doing it to save your life. It was really rather touching."

Roxanne let out a wet little sob. "I'm so sorry…”

"Roxanne..." Gwayne's voice cracked.

"Oh, please don't. I can't take tragic lovers, the trope is a weakness of mine." A cool hand landed on her head. "And don't cry, poppet, I promise I won't make it terrible. All you have to do is come back one day every fortnight and assist me. Fetch me ink, make a meal, things like that. Really, you're getting off easy." Roxanne couldn't stop crying long enough to reply. She was leaning heavily on his leg; she couldn't stop doing that either.

There was a long-suffering sigh and a light stroke to the top of her head. "Poor miserable thing. Alright, time to go home. You've had a long day." The pressure on her head increased for a moment, and Roxanne hiccuped and stopped crying. She suddenly felt weightless. Not just emotionally; actually weightless. Her body left the ground and was given a gentle push, and a moment later she was cuddled in strong, familiar arms.

"I mean it," the sorcerer warned. She couldn't see; her eyes hurt, she was so tired... "Bring her back here at dawn, on the new moon. If she's not here, I'll have to fetch her. I promise you, that will not be fun for anybody."

Gwayne told him very explicitly what he could go do with himself, and then took off with a ground-eating stride.

"See you on the new moon, then." The sorcerer called out, his voice fading behind them.

Gwayne fell into a steady jog. With the comfort of his heartbeat and the steady rocking motion, Roxanne fell into an uneasy sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the angst train. What do you think? Would you sell your soul to a dog for a bowl of stew?


End file.
